Part I The Religions of Indian Origin MRC01 13 6/4/04, 10:46 AM Religions of Indian Origin AFGHANISTAN CHINA Amritsar Kedamath Rishikesh PAKISTAN Badrinath Harappa Hardwar Delhi Indus R. NEPAL Indus Civilization BHUTAN Mohenjo-daro Ayodhya Mathura Lucknow Ganges R. Pushkar Prayag BANGLADESH Benares Gaya Ambaji I N D I A Dakshineshwar Sidphur Bhopal Ahmadabad Jabalpur Jamshedpur Calcutta Dwarka Dakor Pavagadh Raipur Gimar Kadod Nagpur Bhubaneswar Nasik-Tryambak Jagannath Puri Bombay Hyderabad Vishakhapatnam Arabian Sea Panaji Bay of Bengal Tirupati Tiruvannamalai-Kaiahasti Bangalore Madras Mangalore Kanchipuram Pondicherry Calicut Kavaratti Island Madurai Thanjavar Hindu place of pilgrimage Rameswaram Pilgrimage route Major city SRI LANKA The Hindu cultural region 14 MRC01 14 6/4/04, 10:46 AM 1 Hinduism Hinduism The Spirit of Hinduism Through prolonged austerities and devotional practices the sage Narada won the grace of the god Vishnu. The god appeared before him in his hermitage and granted him the fulfillment of a wish. “Show me the magic power of your Maya,” Narada prayed. The god replied, “I will. Come with me,” but with an ambiguous smile on his lips. From the shade of the hermit grove, Vishnu led Narada across a bare stretch of land which blazed like metal under the scorching sun. The two were soon very thirsty. At some distance, in the glaring light, they perceived the thatched roofs of a tiny village. Vishnu asked, “Will you go over there and fetch me some water?” “Certainly, O Lord,” the saint replied, and he made off to the distant group of huts. When Narada reached the hamlet, he knocked at the first door. A beautiful girl opened to him, and the holy man experienced something of which he had never up to that time dreamed: the enchantment of her eyes. They resembled those of his divine Lord and friend, Vishnu. He stood and gazed, simply forgetting what he had come for. The girl, gentle and candid, bade him welcome. Her voice was a golden noose around his neck. As though moving in a trance, he entered the hut. The occupants of the house were full of respect for him, and received him honorably, but almost as if he were an old friend whom they had not seen for a long time. Narada was impressed by their cheerful and noble bearing, and felt entirely at home. Nobody asked him what he had come for. He just seemed to belong to the family. After a certain period, he asked the father for permission to marry the girl, which was no more than everyone in the house was expecting. He became a member of the family, sharing with them the age-old burdens and simple delights of a peasant household. Twelve years passed; he had three children. When his father-in-law died, he became head of the household, inheriting the estate and managing it, tending the cattle and cultivating the fields. The twelfth year, the rainy season was 15 MRC01 15 6/4/04, 10:46 AM Religions of Indian Origin extraordinarily violent: the streams swelled, torrents poured down from the hills, and the little village was inundated by a sudden flood. In the night the straw huts and the cattle were swept away, and everybody fled. With one hand supporting his wife, with the other leading two of his children, and bearing the smallest on his shoulder, Narada set forth hastily. Forging ahead through the pitch darkness and lashed by the rain, he waded through the slippery mud, staggering through the swirling waters. The burden was more than he could manage. He stumbled, and the child slipped from his shoulder and disappeared in the roaring night. With a desperate cry, Narada let go the older children to catch at the smallest, but he was too late. Meanwhile the flood carried off the other two, and even before he could realize the disaster, ripped from his side his wife, swept his own feet from under him, and flung him headlong into the torrent. Uncon- scious, he was stranded eventually on a little cliff. When he returned to conscious- ness, he opened his eyes and saw only a vast sheet of muddy water. He could only weep. “Child!” He heard a familiar voice, which nearly stopped his heart. “Where is the water you went to fetch for me? I have been waiting for more than half an hour.” Narada turned round. Instead of the water he beheld the brilliant desert in the midday sun, and the god standing at his shoulder. “Do you comprehend now the secret of my Maya?” (Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. Joseph Campbell, New York, Harper & Row, 1962) This story, told by the Bengali saint, Sri Ramakrishna, is based on earlier stories from the classical period of Hinduism. Questions for discussion 1 What is Maya? 2 Why does Vishnu have an ambiguous smile on his lips? (See p. 25 below, “The Later Upanishads.”) The Hindu View of Life What we call “Hinduism” is not a unified and single entity, but the sum total of the traditional religious beliefs and practices of the Indian people, a colorful, diverse, and complex set of traditions inherited from a long history, and some- times only loosely related to one another. Each period of Indian history has left its mark and is embodied in its own distinctive writings. This diversity allows individuals a good deal of liberty in choosing a form of religious life suitable to their needs. If there is one theme that runs through these different traditions, summing up perhaps what is most typical of Hinduism as a whole, it is a feeling of the 16 MRC01 16 6/4/04, 10:46 AM Hinduism inherent presence of the divine in every being. Everywhere he looks, the devout Hindu sees God. A feeling very much like this has been described by the great English poet, William Wordsworth: And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. (Tintern Abbey) Since God is what is most real, the Hindu tends to see all the varied manifesta- tions of the world as essentially one, as merely different aspects of the same fundamental reality. You and I are like waves on the ocean of being. The waves come and go, but the vast ocean of eternal being remains. Pre-Vedic Religion The earliest strands of Hinduism that we have knowledge of date back to about the year 2000 bc, to a mysterious civilization which developed in the northwest of India near the Indus river, in what is now Pakistan. Centered on the two cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (see Map on p. 14), this civilization was in some respects surprisingly advanced. The cities were laid out geometrically, had bathing and sewage systems better than anything India was to see again until modern times, and even the working classes had better accommodations than many in India possess today. Our knowledge of their religion comes mainly from figurines and some 2,000 engraved seals used for business purposes. Although no one has yet succeeded in deciphering the writing on the seals, we can learn a certain amount from the pictures engraved on them. In these images we can see already elements of the rich mythological life that has since characterized India. As with many agricultural societies, the religion of the Harappan people focused on fertility, and it did so in ways which we still recognize as typically Indian. The Harappans worshipped a Mother Goddess, familiar to Indians today under the title of Devi. They had various sacred plants and animals, as Indians still have, notably the sacred bull, now known as Nandi, the Joyous. They had statues of nude men reminiscent of the somewhat stiff statues of the saints now honored by the Jains. But perhaps the most surprising figure is that of a god bearing a striking resemblance to the god Shiva, who now plays such a large role in the religious life of India. This deity, depicted on a number of seals, is shown 17 MRC01 17 6/4/04, 10:46 AM Religions of Indian Origin with buffalo horns rising out of his head, a fierce look on his face, sitting nude in what can only be the posture of a yogi, with a prominent phallus, the symbol of sexual potency, and surrounded by wild animals, including two deer (as in the later representations of the Buddha preaching his first sermon in the Deer Park in Benares). This divinity has been called Proto-Shiva. The Shiva known to later Hinduism, though he plays many roles, is perhaps above all the god of fertility, but at the same time he is the great yogi, the supreme ascetic, and one of his titles is Pasupati, the Lord of Beasts. Around 1700 bc the Harappan civilization came to a mysterious end. Its cities were abandoned and its people fled. We do not know why; perhaps be- cause of armed invasion, possibly because of a very prolonged drought. Nor are we certain what happened to the people; perhaps they migrated towards South India, and became merged with what is now the Dravidian population there. During the period which immediately followed, the Vedic period, we see few traces of the Harappan religion, but much of it was evidently preserved, for after the Vedic period ended we find the Harappan divinities mentioned above still alive and well in the religion of the Indian people.